How to Use Pods for Custom Post Types and Fields: Setup to WP-CLI

This article is a localized edition of the Japanese original. Read the Japanese original

Pods (full name "Pods – Custom Content Types and Fields") is a free plugin that adds custom post types, custom taxonomies and custom fields to WordPress. You can register post types and create fields in a single plugin, and it also includes templates and blocks for displaying the data you create.

As of October 2026, the latest version is 3.3.9.2, and it requires WordPress 6.3 or later and PHP 7.2 or later (100,000+ active installs). This article walks through creating and displaying content using the example of a "Book" post type with "ISBN" and "Price" fields. The screens were checked with WordPress 7.1.4 and Pods 3.3.9.2. Parts of the Pods admin are not translated in every language (including Japanese), so this article uses the English labels as they appear in the plugin.

What Pods can do

In Pods, each container you manage is called a "Pod". These are the kinds of Pods (content types) you can create:

You can also "extend" existing Posts, Pages, Categories, Users, Media and Comments by adding fields to them.

Installation

In the admin, go to "Plugins" → "Add New Plugin", search for "Pods", then install and activate "Pods – Custom Content Types and Fields".

With WP-CLI, use the following. The plugin slug is pods.

wp plugin install pods --activate

Once activated, a "Pods Admin" item is added to the admin menu.

Create a custom post type

1. Open "Pods Admin" → "Add New"
2. Choose "Create a new Content Type"
3. Under "Content Type", select "Custom Post Type (like Posts or Pages)"
4. Enter Book for "Singular Label" and Books for "Plural Label"
5. If site visitors should see this content, select "Yes, make this content available for Dynamic Features in Pods and WordPress" under "Content Privacy"
6. Open "Advanced" and set "Pod Name" (the post type name; lowercase letters and underscores) to book
7. Click "Next Step". The Pod is created and its edit screen opens

The "Content Privacy" option in step 5 is not selected by default. If you leave it that way, the post type isn't treated as public, and visitors won't see its single pages or the shortcode output described later (administrators see a "Pods Access Rights: Admin-only Notice" message instead). To change it later, turn on "Publicly Queryable" in the "Advanced Options" tab of the Pod's edit screen and save.

The "Pod Name" is used as the post type name in URLs and in the database, so don't change it after you've added content.

Add fields

Add fields on the Pod's edit screen.

1. Click "Add Field"
2. Enter ISBN as the label (the name shown on screen) and isbn as the name (the name used in code)
3. Under "Field Type", choose "Plain Text" and save
4. In the same way, add a field with the label Price, the name price and the field type "Plain Number" (shown as "整数", "integer", in the Japanese admin)
5. Click "Save Pod" to save the Pod

The main field types are:

After saving, a "Books" item appears in the menu, and you can add and edit books just like posts. The ISBN and Price inputs you added appear below the editor.

Storage types (meta-based and table-based)

With the default "Meta Based (WP Default)" storage, a custom post type Pod saves field values as standard WordPress custom fields (in the wp_postmeta table). That means you can read the values with get_post_meta() without using any Pods functions.

<?php
// With a meta-based Pod, standard WordPress functions can read the values too
$isbn = get_post_meta( get_the_ID(), 'isbn', true );

If you choose "Table Based", field values are stored in a dedicated table for each Pod. Advanced Content Types and table-based storage are disabled by default; enable "Advanced Content Types" and "Table Storage" under "Pods Admin" → "Components" to use them. Consider them when you have a lot of data and filtering by fields becomes slow. If in doubt, use meta-based storage, which works with other plugins and themes.

Display fields in templates (PHP)

Show fields on single pages

In a classic theme, single pages for the book post type use single-book.php. Inside the loop, use the pods() function to output field values.

<?php
// Inside the loop in single-book.php, output the fields of the current book
$book = pods( 'book', get_the_ID() );
?>
<p>ISBN: <?php echo esc_html( $book->field( 'isbn' ) ); ?></p>
<p>Price: <?php echo esc_html( $book->display( 'price' ) ); ?> yen</p>

• pods( 'pod_name', post_id ) fetches the data for one item
• field() returns the stored value as is, while display() returns a value formatted according to the field settings. In this example, a price of 3300 is 3300 with field() and 3,300 with display()
• Escape values with esc_html() or similar when you output them

List items that match conditions

Pass conditions to pods() to fetch multiple items, then use fetch() to step through them one at a time.

<?php
// Show up to 10 books priced at 2,500 yen or more, newest first
$books = pods(
	'book',
	array(
		'limit'   => 10,
		'orderby' => 't.post_date DESC',
		'where'   => 'price.meta_value + 0 >= 2500',
	)
);

if ( 0 < $books->total() ) {
	echo '<ul class="book-list">';
	while ( $books->fetch() ) {
		printf(
			'<li><a href="%1$s">%2$s</a> (ISBN: %3$s, %4$s yen)</li>',
			esc_url( get_permalink( $books->id() ) ),
			esc_html( $books->field( 'post_title' ) ),
			esc_html( $books->field( 'isbn' ) ),
			esc_html( $books->display( 'price' ) )
		);
	}
	echo '</ul>';
}

• where and orderby are used as parts of the SQL query. t. refers to the posts table, and price.meta_value is the value of the meta-based price field (meta values are strings, so + 0 makes them compare as numbers)
• Never put unvalidated input, such as form values, into where. It can lead to SQL injection
• total() returns the number of items fetched in this query, and id() returns the current item's ID

The output of both code examples was confirmed with Pods 3.3.9.2.

Display with Pod Templates and a shortcode

To display content without writing PHP, use Pods' "Templates" component (enabled by default).

1. Under "Pods Admin" → "Pod Templates", create a new template named book-list
2. In the content, write what to show for one item using {@field_name} placeholders (magic tags). For example:

<li>{@post_title} (ISBN: {@isbn}, {@price} yen)</li>

After publishing the template, place a shortcode on the page where you want the list. In the block editor, enter the following in a "Shortcode" block.

[pods name="book" template="book-list" limit="10"]

The {@price} magic tag outputs the formatted value (for example, 3,300), the same as display(). Note that writing an SQL expression in the shortcode's orderby can trigger the error "ORDER BY contains SQL that is not allowed" for security reasons. For fine-grained sorting, use the PHP from the previous section.

In the block editor and the Site Editor, you can also display lists or single items with the blocks Pods adds, such as "Pods Item List", "Pods Single Item" and "Pods Field Value".

Create Pods and fields with WP-CLI

Pods includes WP-CLI commands (wp pods), so you can create Pods and fields without the admin screens. The following steps were confirmed with Pods 3.3.9.2.

# Create a custom post type Pod
wp pods pod add --type=post_type --name=book --label=Books --label_singular=Book

# Create a group to hold the fields (note the "id" value in the output)
wp pods group add --pod=book --name=book_info --label="Book details"

# Add ISBN (text) and Price (number) fields to the group (--group_id is the id above; 5 in this example)
wp pods field add --pod=book --group_id=5 --name=isbn --label=ISBN --type=text
wp pods field add --pod=book --group_id=5 --name=price --label=Price --type=number

• In our test environment, specifying the group by name (--group=book_info) in wp pods field add caused an error, so the group is specified by ID (--group_id)
• A Pod created with the command is not public either, just like one created in the admin. To show it to visitors, turn on "Publicly Queryable" in the "Advanced Options" tab of the Pod's edit screen (or, from the command line, wp pods pod update-by-slug book --args='{"publicly_queryable":"1"}')
• Check the available options with wp help pods pod add and wp help pods field add. The wp pod create and wp pod update commands from an earlier version of this article don't exist

Things to watch out for

• Don't rename Pods or fields later: Existing data is stored under the old names, so it may stop showing up
• Don't reuse a post type name from another plugin: Registering a post type with the same name in Custom Post Type UI, ACF or similar causes conflicts
• Single pages return 404: If you get a 404 right after creating a post type, go to "Settings" → "Permalinks" and click "Save Changes" to refresh the permalink settings
• Back up before making changes: Deleting a Pod or changing its storage type affects existing data. Back up the database before you start

Summary

• Pods lets you create custom post types, taxonomies and fields in a single plugin
• Create a Pod under "Pods Admin" → "Add New", and add fields with "Add Field" on its edit screen
• To show the content to visitors, choose the public option under "Content Privacy"
• Display data with field(), display() and fetch() from pods(), or with Pod Templates and a shortcode, or with the Pods blocks
• You can also create Pods with WP-CLI using wp pods pod add, wp pods group add and wp pods field add

Related articles:

• How to create a custom post type with Custom Post Type UI
• How to use Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) in WordPress
• How to register a custom post type in WordPress

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